git clone https://github.com/reticlehq/reticle ~/.claude/skills/skillSKILL.md
# Reticle
Reticle embeds a dev-only SDK in the user's running app and exposes it to you as `reticle_*` MCP tools. You look, act, observe, and assert against the real app. No screenshots, and no browser download for the verify loop: it drives the tab the user already has open.
This file is the whole critical path and nothing else. Everything it leaves out is at `https://docs.reticle.sh`, one page at a time.
## Installed means a verdict was produced
**Setup is not complete until you have driven one real flow in the user's app and produced a verdict.** Writing config files is not installed. Every earlier point looks like success and is not:
- `init` exited 0. Files were written. Nothing connected.
- The `reticle_*` tools appeared. Your client can reach a daemon. The app is very likely still uninstrumented.
- A session is listed. The app dialled in. The user has still seen nothing happen.
**Do not tell the user Reticle is set up until step 5 has produced a verdict.** The most common failure in the field is an agent that finishes step 1, reports success, and leaves a user with config files and no instrumented page.
## Setup runs to the end without you
**Do not stop, and do not ask the user anything, until their app is running with Reticle inside it and a session is connected.** Everything between here and that point is yours to do: run `init`, fix the wiring it could not, start the dev server, open the browser. Not one of those needs a human, and every one of them has been the place an onboarding turn died with nothing to show.
Questions you must not ask, because the repo you are sitting in already answers them: which framework, which package manager, which port, which editor or MCP client, whether to start the dev server, whether to open the browser, whether to carry on. Decide, act, and say what you did in one line.
There are exactly three places you may stop, and none is a question about a preference:
1. **No recognisable dev script in `package.json`.** Say so; do not invent one.
2. **Your host asks the human to approve a command.** That prompt belongs to the host. Never bypass or suppress it, and take a refusal as the answer.
3. **On a first install only, the client restart that loads the MCP tools** (step 2). Even then, keep going until the app is running and connected, and stop for the restart last, with only the drive left.
Setup requires a client restart, which ends your turn. This file was fetched into the context that just ended, so nothing carries it across unless you make it. **Before you trigger the restart, write the remaining steps into `RETICLE-SETUP.md` at the repo root**, one line each, with the step you stopped at marked. That file is what you re-read afterwards. Delete it once step 5 has produced a verdict.
Better still, install the on-disk copy first. It survives the restart on its own, and it is the same content:
```bash
npx skills add reticlehq/reticle --skill install-and-verify -y
```
**After the restart, resume at the step you were on.** Do not start over, and do not skip forward.
## Feedback is first-class
Reticle is built for agents. You are its user, and your experience is the only signal that decides what gets built or fixed. It disappears when your context does.
The moment Reticle breaks, lies, cannot see something you needed, costs too many calls, or gives you trouble during setup:
```
reticle_feedback { kind, text }
```
`kind` is one of `bug`, `gap`, `ambiguity`, `feature_request`, `improvement`. One call, then carry on with the task. If the tools are unreachable (setup unfinished, daemon down), file the same report from the shell:
```bash
npx @reticlehq/server feedback --agent --kind <bug|gap|ambiguity|feature_request|improvement> "what happened"
```
Nothing is too minor. Report defects in **Reticle**; a bug you find in the app under test is Reticle working, and belongs in your answer to the user. Never put app source, secrets, or user data in a report.
## Do not re-read this file to look something up
Fetch the one page that answers the question instead. **Appending `.md` to any docs URL returns its source with no site chrome.**
```bash
curl https://docs.reticle.sh/llms.txt # every page title and URL; read this first
curl https://docs.reticle.sh/frameworks.md # per-framework SDK wiring
curl https://docs.reticle.sh/troubleshooting.md # nothing connected, click did nothing, verdict unknown
curl https://docs.reticle.sh/agent-cheatsheet.md # the verify loop on one screen
```
Every page arrives with the rules that matter prepended, so a single fetch orients you without a second call.
## Which path am I on
```bash
cat .reticle.json 2>/dev/null || echo NOT_FOUND
```
- `NOT_FOUND` → **SETUP** below.
- File exists → **VERIFY** below. If `reticle_sessions` then returns an empty list, fetch `https://docs.reticle.sh/troubleshooting.md`; do not restart setup.
---
# SETUP
Five steps, in order. None is optional. Step 3 is the one that gets skipped, and it is the one the whole thing depends on.
## 1. Run init. Ask the user nothing.
```bash
RETICLE_INSTALL_SOURCE=skill_file npx @reticlehq/server@latest init
```
`@latest` is deliberate: `npx` caches, and a stale cached CLI is the most common silent setup failure. Never pin a version here.
It detects the framework, package manager and UI library, registers the MCP server with the agents on the machine, installs the SDK, writes `.reticle.json` and the `/reticle` command, wires the build config, and scaffolds a capabilities file from the `data-testid` values it found.
**Ask nothing:** not the framework, package manager, port, editor, or MCP client. Every one is answerable from the repo you are sitting in. In a monorepo run it at the root anyway. With one app under `apps/*` or `packages/*` it wires that app silently. With several it wires nothing, lists them, and names the flag: re-run with `--app <dir>` for the one the user is working in, the one their request named, oInstall, instrument and verify this running web app from the inside (DOM, network, routing, console and framework state) instead of screenshots or guessing. Drives one real flow end to end and returns a verdict with the file:line to fix. Use when the user asks to set up or install Reticle, when a user-facing change needs proving before you call it done, when a test passes but the UI is broken, or when the user types /reticle.
Test-driven development for behaviour a unit test cannot reach, by writing the expectation against the running app before writing the code. Declare the consequence first, watch it fail, implement, watch it pass. Use when building a user-facing feature, when the user asks for TDD on UI or full-stack work, when a unit test cannot express the outcome that matters, or when you want a red-green loop that runs against the real app instead of mocks.
Sweep a whole running web app for what is broken, without writing a script or knowing the codebase. Clicks every reachable control and reports dead buttons, console errors, failed requests, and places where the API and the screen disagree. Use on an unfamiliar codebase, before a release, after a big merge or dependency bump, when the user asks for a smoke test or a health check, or when someone says "just check everything still works".
Find out why something in a running web app does not work, when the console is empty and the code looks correct. Reads the click, the request, the store and the console together and returns the file:line to open. Use when a button does nothing, a form will not submit, data will not load, a page renders blank or stale, a modal will not close, or the user says "it's broken" and the code review says it is fine.
Check that the UI you actually rendered uses the design system, by reading computed styles in the running app against the project's design tokens. Catches hardcoded hex colors, off-palette backgrounds, invisible or unusable controls, and animations that never ran. Use after building or restyling a component, when a design review is wanted, when a UI looks slightly off but nobody can say why, or when a design system exists and nothing checks whether the code follows it.
Drive and verify an Electron or Tauri desktop app from the inside, including the main-process and Rust IPC calls a browser tool cannot see. Use when a desktop app needs testing, when a feature works in the browser but not in the packaged app, when an IPC or invoke call needs proving, when a desktop screenshot or visual diff is wanted, or when you need a headless run of a desktop UI in CI.
Find out why the tests pass but the app is broken. Catches false greens: a green suite over a feature that does not work, a mocked API standing in for a real one, an assertion that holds no matter what the app does, a click handler wired to nothing. Use when the suite is green and the user says it is broken, when a test never fails, when coverage looks fine but bugs still ship, or before trusting a passing run you did not watch.
Pick up the bugs a human flagged by pointing at them in the running app, each arriving with the element, the note they typed, and the source file and line. Use when the user says they marked or flagged something, when starting a session on an app someone has been clicking through, when a designer or PM has left feedback in the UI, or when the user describes a problem as "that button there" without saying which file.